Amused Cynic

Lots of military metaphors popping up with regard to Obamacare, and I certainly hope they prove apt. Hugh Hewitt sees the makings for an upset victory over the Spanish Armada.

On May 28, 1588, Philip II of Spain launched a massive Armada, aimed at changing England forever. More than 130 ships loaded with supplies and 30,000 warriors left for a rendezvous with the army of Duke of Parma and his army of tens of thousands of more veterans who would barge under the Armada’s protective screen across the English Channel.

Philip II threw everything he had at Elizabeth –and as Arthur Herman’s “To Rule the Waves” makes clear, the Spanish monarch had to. Sir Francs Drake had bled Philip’s empire with a pair of bold strokes and the momentum (and the money needed to maintain the momentum) was bleeding away.

So he risked it all, sending everything at England at once. England was saved by a number of factors including Drake’s seamanship, superior gun- and ship-design and, of course, the weather.

Philip went for the big win, the single crushing campaign to change history. He gambled and lost.

President Obama’s legislative armada, launched in waves at Congress all spring and early summer, is having enormous difficulties these days. His big demand for supplies for his vision –the Stimulus– is seen by increasing millions to have been a waste of massive amounts of money, a unique opportunity that could have helped revive job generation that instead went into pork on a historic scale, even as unemployment continues to rise.

Senator Jim DeMint’s “Waterloo” analogy struck such a nerve that The One felt the need to respond, snippily.

The president went on the offensive after opposition appeared to be rising among lawmakers unhappy with the massive healthcare reform plan proposed by his administration.

Last week, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint predicted the Obama plan would not pass Congress, and said such a failure could be Obama’s “Waterloo,” referring to the battle that effectively ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s military career.

“It will break him,” DeMint said,

Obama made direct reference to DeMint’s predictions, and called on lawmakers to avoid the “politics of delay and defeat.”

“There are some in this town who are content to perpetuate the status quo, are in fact fighting reform on behalf of powerful special interests,” Obama said.

“There are others who recognize the problem, but believe — or perhaps, hope — that we can put off the hard work of insurance reform for another day, another year, another decade.”

Greg Gutfeld’s column at Big Hollywood doesn’t use a military analogy per se, but it reminded me of one, using a lesser known military event—The Son Tay raid into North Vietnam in 1970. The letters on their post-operation unoffical patch stand for “Kept In The Dark, Fed Only Horsesh*t,” referring to the extreme secrecy of the plan, details of which even the pilots were kept in the dark on until they were airborne.

Kinda sounds like Obamacare and Obamastimulus.